PACU Nurse Salary Calculator

1. Choose hourly or annual pay. Enter your base pay, your regular hours per week and your weeks per year.
2. Add your evening or weekend differential and the share of hours it covers. Then add on-call hours, call-back hours and certification pay if you have them.
3. Read your total annual gross pay, the breakdown table and where your base rate sits among all registered nurses.

What each result tells you:

The first preset is an example, not a typical PACU wage. It shows $45.00 an hour for 40 hours a week, a $3.00 differential on a quarter of the hours, 8 standby hours at $3.50, 1 call-back hour and $1.00 of certification pay. That totals $102,206.00 a year. The $45.00 base rate sits near the 44th percentile for all registered nurses.

A PACU nurse salary is the gross pay a registered nurse earns in a year for work in a post-anesthesia care unit. The unit is also called the recovery room. Pay combines a base rate with differentials, call pay and certification pay.

The certifying board for this specialty is the American Board of Perianesthesia Nursing Certification (ABPANC). It splits the work into phases of care and offers one credential for each side.

Source: ABPANC eligibility and exam choice pages, read on 2026-10-02. Both credentials require a current, unrestricted registered nurse licence.

BLS publishes no wage figure for PACU nurses. A PACU nurse holds a registered nurse licence, and BLS counts all licensed registered nurses in code 29-1141. Every BLS number on this page covers all 3,379,720 registered nurse jobs.

BLS notes that hospital nurses work in shifts and may be on call, which means being available to work on short notice. Call pay is therefore one of the inputs here.

This tool is for perianesthesia nurses checking an offer or a schedule. It is not a pay quote from any employer. For LPN and nurse practitioner tables, use the nurse salary calculator.

The calculator builds annual pay from your own pay components. It then places your base hourly rate in the BLS wage distribution for all registered nurses.

1. Convert. An hourly rate is multiplied by regular hours and weeks. A salary is divided by them to get the base rate.
2. Add each extra. Every component uses only the numbers you typed. A blank field counts as zero.
3. Find the band. The base rate is checked against the 10th, 25th, 50th, 75th and 90th percentile wages for registered nurses.
4. Interpolate. W1 and W2 are the two BLS wages around your rate. P1 and P2 are their percentiles.

This page has four extra pay lines: differential, standby, call-back and certification pay. The tool keeps each one separate, so you can see which one matters.

This table covers every registered nurse, not PACU nurses alone. BLS publishes no separate wage figure for PACU nurses. Source: BLS OEWS, national estimates, May 2025. Read on 2026-10-02.

BLS annual wages equal the hourly wage times 2,080 hours. BLS wages are straight-time pay. They exclude overtime pay and shift differentials, so the tool keeps those out of the comparison.

A hospital PACU nurse earns a base rate of $45.80 an hour for four 10-hour shifts a week. A quarter of her hours fall after the evening cutoff and earn $3.00 more. She is on call 8 hours a week at $3.50 and works 1.5 call-back hours a week at 1.5 times base. Her certification pays $1.00 an hour. A surgery center offers $47.50 an hour with no evenings and no call. These figures are an example, not survey data.

Her four extras add $10,454.60 a year. The surgery center raises base pay by $3,536.00 and moves her base rate to about the 52nd percentile. Her hospital total of $105,718.60 still beats the offer by $6,918.60, at the cost of evenings and call.

Hours After the Evening Cutoff

The differential share sets this line. In the example, 25% of 2,080 hours is 520 hours, worth $1,560.00 at $3.00 an hour. A day-only schedule earns none.

On-Call and Call-Back Hours

Call pay depends on standby hours and on how often you are called in. Eight standby hours a week at $3.50 pay $1,456.00 a year. The 1.5 call-back hours pay $5,358.60, more than the standby line.

Shift Pattern

Hours per week change annual pay at the same rate. At $45.80 an hour, three 12-hour shifts pay $85,737.60 a year. Four 10-hour shifts pay $95,264.00. The salary to hourly calculator converts other schedules.

Hospital or Ambulatory Setting

BLS reports a median annual wage of $100,220 for all registered nurses in hospitals and $91,230 in ambulatory healthcare services. These medians cover every nurse in each setting, not recovery nurses alone.

Certification Pay

An hourly certification rate applies to every regular hour. One dollar an hour on 2,080 hours is $2,080.00 a year. Employers decide whether to pay it.

BLS data shows higher median pay for registered nurses in hospitals than in ambulatory healthcare services. The gap was $8,990 a year in May 2025. It describes all registered nurses in those settings.

Source: BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, May 2025 wages, read on 2026-10-02. The hourly column is this page dividing the annual median by 2,080. BLS says ambulatory healthcare services include physician offices, home healthcare and outpatient care centers.

The table is a backdrop, not a PACU pay scale. A workplace with no evening hours and no call pays neither extra. Compare your two offers line by line in the calculator.

Comparing a Hospital Offer with a Surgery Center Offer

Enter the hospital job with its differential and call. Put the surgery center base rate in the second offer field. The tool shows the base-pay difference, and the total shows what the extras add.

Choosing Between CPAN and CAPA

The exam that fits depends on where your hours are. ABPANC points nurses with Phase I hours to CPAN. It points nurses with preanesthesia, day of surgery, Phase II or extended care hours to CAPA. Enter any certification pay to see its yearly value.

Pricing a New Call Rota

Change the on-call hours and watch the extra pay line. Add the call-back hours you expect, since they pay more per hour than standby.

Budgeting from the Result

The result is gross pay. Read the gross vs net income guide before you plan a household budget from it. The overtime pay calculator handles weeks when late cases push you past 40 hours.

1. Comparing Base Rates and Ignoring the Extras

A $47.50 offer looks better than a $45.80 rate. In the example the lower rate pays $6,918.60 more a year once differential, call and certification pay are added.

2. Ignoring What the Extras Cost You

Extra pay comes with evenings and call nights. The tool prices the pay. It cannot price the time, so weigh both.

3. Using the Hospital Median as a PACU Wage

The $100,220 hospital median covers every hospital registered nurse. BLS has no median for recovery units.

4. Entering the Differential on All Hours

A day-shift recovery nurse earns the evening rate only on late hours. Two late hours in a 10-hour shift are a 20% share, not 100%.

5. Mixing Annual and Hourly Offers

The second offer uses the same pay type as your base pay. Convert a salary offer to an hourly rate first, or switch the pay type to annual for both.

The pay arithmetic is exact for the numbers you enter. The percentile is an estimate, and it describes all registered nurses.

Your pay stub is the final check. Payroll rules for overtime and call pay differ by employer and by state.

BLS does not publish an hourly figure for PACU nurses. It counts them as registered nurses, whose median hourly wage was $46.90 in May 2025. The middle half of all registered nurses earned between $38.62 and $54.02 an hour.

PACU stands for post-anesthesia care unit, the area where patients recover after anesthesia. The certifying board, ABPANC, calls the first recovery stage Postanesthesia Phase I and the later stage Phase II.

No official data answers that. BLS reports one wage distribution for all registered nurses and does not split it by unit. Your base rate, call schedule and differentials decide your pay, so the calculator asks for each one.

CPAN matches practice in Postanesthesia Phase I. CAPA matches practice in the preanesthesia phase, day of surgery or procedure, Postanesthesia Phase II and extended care. ABPANC says the choice depends on where your patients spend their time, not on your work setting.

ABPANC requires at least 1,200 hours of direct clinical experience in the two years before you apply, plus a current unrestricted registered nurse licence. Sitting both exams in one window requires 1,200 hours on each side.

For registered nurses as a whole, yes. BLS reports a median annual wage of $100,220 in hospitals and $91,230 in ambulatory healthcare services for May 2025. Those medians cover all registered nurses in each setting.

It adds the differential times the hours that earn it. As an example, $2.50 an hour on 20% of 2,080 hours adds $1,040 a year. Your employer sets the rate and the cutoff time.

No premium pay is included. BLS wages are straight-time gross pay, and the survey names overtime pay and shift differentials as excluded. The calculator compares only your base rate with BLS for that reason.

At the national registered nurse median of $46.90 an hour, four 10-hour shifts a week for 52 weeks pay $97,552.00 before tax. Three 12-hour shifts at the same rate pay $87,796.80.

Take-home pay depends on your tax filing status, state and deductions, and this tool does not estimate tax. It shows gross pay only, so that you can check each line against your pay stub.

No. The calculation runs in your browser and nothing is sent to a server. The Save button stores a result only on your own device.

• BLS OEWS Profiles, May 2025 national estimates (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Select occupation 29-1141, Registered Nurses. Read 2026-10-02.)
• BLS technical notes for the May 2025 OEWS estimates (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Defines the wage: straight-time gross pay without overtime or shift differentials, 2,080-hour year. Read 2026-10-02.)
• BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook: Registered Nurses (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Nurse types, employers, work schedules and 2025 to 2035 outlook. Read 2026-10-02.)
• ABPANC: CPAN and CAPA eligibility requirements (American Board of Perianesthesia Nursing Certification. Licence and clinical hour requirements. Read 2026-10-02.)
• ABPANC: CPAN or CAPA, which exam is right for you (American Board of Perianesthesia Nursing Certification. Phases of care matched to each exam. Read 2026-10-02.)